


Come and Get Him

by Love_andbalance



Series: Dark Fairy Tales [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Defying Fate, F/M, Lost Ben Solo, Monsters, Resurrection, Rey Wants Her Ben Back, Reylo - Freeform, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25494046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_andbalance/pseuds/Love_andbalance
Summary: A response to the July 23rd word prompt for the Sacred Texts Collection for Ben Solo Tags- The Word of the Day was 'Storm'Story based on the following prompt by @galacticidiots on Twitter-"Why do you still go there?"The water took something from me. I'm waiting for it to give him back."It's been 234 days since fisherman Ben was lost at sea. Rey waits. On day 235, a message appears in the sand."If you want him, come and get him."
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Dark Fairy Tales [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848499
Comments: 28
Kudos: 94
Collections: Galactic Idiots Collection, The Sacred Texts [ 2020 ]





	Come and Get Him

“You’re terrified of the ocean, Rey. Why do you still come here?” Rose’s question echoed in Rey’s mind as they walked, black stone crunching beneath their feet with each step across the beach. The wind whipped around her, sneaking its slender tendrils of cold beneath the hem of her sweater and dragging her hair from the confines of its bun.

Rey sighed and shoved her hands in her pockets, seeking warmth and something to do with her body. How could she explain the restless need that drove her here day after day, to watch the horizon with bated breath and pointless hope?

Today was day two hundred and thirty-four, each of them scratched carelessly into the walls of the bedroom where his clothes still hung undisturbed in their closet, where his scent still clung stubbornly to the pillows on his side of the bed.

“The water took something from me. I’m waiting for it to give him back.”

“It won’t,” Rose said softly. Her fingers trembled when she set them gently on Rey’s arm, but there was no waver of doubt in her voice, not anymore, not after so long. “He’s gone. He can’t come back, and you have to look at what you still have ahead…”

“He’ll come back,” Rey interrupted with a firmly bright smile. She ignored Rose’s look of concern, her subtle sigh, as they turned to walk toward home. Rose wasn’t the only one that was worried about her, not the first one to suggest that it was time to let go.

His mother’s voice had rang with hollow grief when she had sat on the couch in their living room and patted Rey’s hand soothingly, phrases like “your happiness” and “what’s best for you” and “he’d want that” on her lips.

The words had hung weighty between them, heavy with Leia’s good intentions, but the water still called her, and Rey still answered- standing each day with her feet just shy of the waves that lapped endlessly at the shore and her eyes pinned on the infinite horror of the abyss.

The sea frightened her as much as it tempted her, her longing always at war with the terror in her mother’s voice as it wound like a thread through her memories, always a warning never to go too near the water.

Her mother hadn’t listened to her own advice, and Rey had grown to be a woman in the care of strangers, alone and lonely until her world had been brightened by the love of a man with the sea in his heart.

Now it had taken him, as well, and it was more than she could bear.

***

It was day two hundred and thirty-five when she found the message scrawled in the dark sand at the edge of the water.

“If you want him come and get him.”

***

Another storm, so much like the one that had swept the sea the day she lost him, rumbled ominously across the sky as she tugged the small white rowboat into the waves.

The wood of the oars rubbed roughly against the smooth, unworked skin of her palms as she dug the paddles into the water. The muscles in her back and arms wept against the effort it required to gain even a few feet of distance from the shore, but she grit her teeth against the pain and the blisters and her own terrifying doubts…Ben was the only thing that mattered, the only that _ever_ truly mattered.

If she failed to bring him back, she was prepared to join him, to free her spirit to walk the beaches in the afterlife until she found him.

Giving up had never been something she could do; all she knew was how to wait.

The storm rolled in, stirring the waves into a frenzy until she could no longer make progress against the current. It would be here then, in the middle of the protected bay where the water still crashed violently against the hull of her boat, that she would make her demands of the sea.

“Come and get him,” it had told her.

Well, she had arrived.

It would have to return him or take her as well.

She stood on wobbly legs as the waves pitched and rolled the small boat beneath her and her voice rose to challenge the roar of the sea and the crashing of thunder. Her screams were lost, carried away on the wind before they could fall on anyone’s ears but her own- but she screamed anyway.

Two hundred and thirty-five days of fury, and loss, and pain all echoed into the empty void with each broken cry that tore from her throat. She raged until her breaths felt like shards of broken glass in her throat and her limbs ached.

“Give him back,” she sobbed, sinking to her knees and clutching the sides of the boat with fingers that had gone blue as the water sprayed up at each wave to coat her with cold salty dampness in the oncoming darkness. “You said you’d give him back.”

The boat bucked beneath her, heaving impossibly to the starboard side until it hung suspended and impossibly balanced on its side. Rey clung to the battered wood for the space of one, two heartbeats before fate denied her the last of faint hope and the capsizing boat dumped her into the mercilessly icy embrace of the ocean.

Her mind flashed white, all thought stolen as the water enveloped her with a cold that stabbed into her like knives. Only some thoughtless instinct for own survival sealed her lips closed on the gasp of surprise that would have filled her lungs with the deadly freezing sea water.

The waves tumbled her, flipping her head over feet too rapidly for her to determine which way she needed to swim in the darkness to reach the surface.

Her hands clawed at the water around her, searching for air or the paint chipped wood of the boat that she knew was floating upside down in the water above her, but she found neither until her lungs were burning and her heartbeat, the only sound she could hear in her eerie underwater prison of darkness, wss racing in fear.

Her mother had warned her about the water.

Her head broke the surface and her chest heaved in grateful breaths of salt tinged air as thunder and lightening spilt the sky above her, turning the familiar sight of the sea into a broken nightmare. She wiped her hand across her face as she coughed up swallowed bits of the sea and pushed the relentless rainwater off her skin and away from her mouth so she could finally breathe.

She kicked off her shoes, relieved to then have only the heavy fabric of her dress swirling around her legs to weigh her down and looked around in vain for the boat. She saw nothing but black water and the shattered reflections of lightening that danced across the tumultuous waves. The boat, and the shore, had been swallowed by the night.

She sucked in a lungful of air, and then another, trying to push away the panic rising in her chest and remember why she’d come. Ben was here, the ocean was going to give him back…and the determination that flooded into her was nearly as powerful as the strength that a steady supply of oxygen was giving back to her starving brain and weakening muscles.

She was not going to drown, not here, not yet.

The thought felt like nothing more than a cruel trick when something cold and slimy wrapped itself around her ankle and pulled her under.

It happened too fast for her to scream, too fast her to fight. The water rushed past her as the grip on her ankle tightened, and terror pushed a stream of bubbles from her lips. Some separate part of her mind, numb with terror and held aloof from the experience, believed that those bubbles would be the last part of her that would see the surface. She was already too deep, pulled down too far, to make it back… even if she swam as fast as she could, the limited oxygen in her lungs wouldn’t hold out long enough for her to reach more.

A small sob hovered at the back of throat, as the creature that held her slowed in its descent and then stopped, leaving her floating in the dark still waters far beneath the storm-tossed waves.

She could see nothing in the inky blackness, but she could feel the creature as it swirled through the water around her, sending gentle ripples against her skin and setting the fabric of her skirt swirling around her thighs.

Light bloomed before her, blue and unnatural and illuminating a horror of the deep so frightening that she let out a shout that stripped her of the last precious air she possessed.

Its skin was scarred and thick, the left side of a nearly human face that had been torn and unevenly healed so that it was twisted into a mocking caricature of life. The eyes gleamed with victory in their deep-set sockets, and the intelligence it possessed was nearly as disturbing as the tentacle that pressed itself against her face.

She flinched from the contact, unsuccessfully struggling to escape as the suckers were digging into the flesh of cheek, sinking in invisible hooks of bone that were designed to keep its prey immobile. Dark tendrils of blood snaked through the water between them.

“Young Rey,” it crooned, the sound distorted to her ears but still discernible. “Welcome…breathe,” he instructed, eyes lingering on her lips, pressed together in a desperate attempt to prevent herself from doing just that. She was clinging to her last few moments of life with the same stubbornness of will that had brought her this far.

“Breathe,” he instructed again, reaching for her with more tentacles and giving her a shake that rattled her teeth until she opened her mouth and burning cold water pressed its way inexorably into her lungs. She sagged in relief as she exhaled, the water bringing her life instead of the death she expected.

“It’s the venom,” the creature explained, waving a tentacle in front of her and sending her blood drifting through the water. “One of its many…useful properties.”

“You’re the one who brought me here,” she said as she watched him warily.

“Of course,” he admitted, teeth flashing in a horrible mocking smile.

She snarled, fists forming at her sides. “Where…is…Ben?”

His laughter was cruel, but he nodded slightly, “Ah, yes, Ben. You wanted him back…but will you take what I’ve made of him?”

The circle of light grew wider, revealing a sea of floating corpses that had been hovering in the darkness just beyond her awareness. They watched her with empty eyes, the flesh falling horrifying from their bones. Their heads turned to follow her movements, and she realized with a sickening jolt that they were dead but somehow not empty of life.

“What did you do to them? To Ben?”

It said nothing and she swallowed her nausea, burying her terror and forcing herself to scan each face as she turned in a slow circle and looked for the person she had come to save.

The creature grew impatient, reaching behind him and wrapping one foul tentacle around the ankle of a body that floated behind him and dragging it into the light.

“Ben,” she cried when she recognized the dark hair and familiar tattered T shirt that twisted in the water around him. She and swam forward recklessly… only to be brought up short by the sight of his face as it emerged from the dark.

The right side of his precious face had begun to rot away, the icy temperature of the water not enough to stop the steady march of deterioration after so many days. The white bones of his skull were visible beneath the ragged edges of his skin where it had been torn away. His eyes were no longer the warm amber of whiskey in the firelight, they were glazed over and grey and no glint of recognition stirred in their depths.

“What did you do to him?” she repeated angrily, fingers hovering just above his intact cheek, but unable to force herself to touch what she knew would be dead and waxy flesh.

“I saved him,” the creature said, tugging on Ben’s ankle and drawing him away from her. “He wasn’t alive when he made his way to my domain. Just one of many casualties that the sea has claimed.”

“If he is dead- if he _has been_ dead- then why am I here?”

“Perhaps the sea has taken pity on you.”

“The sea didn’t bring me here, you did.” Her mind worked toward an understanding that hovered just beyond her grasp.

“Don’t be a fool child. The sea is mother to us all- the beginning of life, the bringer of death. The power over all living things.” Something greedy flashed in his eyes. “Even creatures of the darkness heed her will. I’m not so different than the beings that live out their lives in the light above the waves.”

Rey ignored that, shoving aside the revulsion that crept along her spine at the comparison and focusing on her purpose. “You said I could come and get him. How? How do I take him back?”

“Quite simply. You need only to take him and go.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I can just take him? You won’t try and stop me?”

“I won’t need to,” he said with a smile. “You’ll never make it the surface alive. The venom that allows you to breathe will only last for only so long.”

Rey tipped her head toward the surface, defeat bitter on her tongue. She knew she’d never make it alone and with Ben’s weight…

“You knew my name,” she murmured, turning back to face the creature, and watching as his smile faltered. “Why did you know my name? Ben was dead when you found him, so he didn’t tell you about me.”

“As I said, the sea…”

“The sea,” she repeated. “The power over all living things…”

Something about the phrase danced tantalizingly at the edges of her memory, bringing with the familiar sound of her mother’s nearly forgotten voice, lost to her so long ago.

“Remember,” it whispered in her mind. “Never be afraid of what you are.”

She closed her eyes, letting the memories seep back into her mind. Her mother’s voice, the warm touch of a hand on her forehead, a warning that was not meant to be lost.

Her eyes snapped open. “You’re Snoke,” she accused, and the creature hissed, baring its teeth at her. It was all the confirmation that she needed. “You’re the creature that my mother warned me about before she disappeared. You’re the reason I’ve always been afraid to go into the water.”

“Your mother made you difficult to find,” he admitted, “until you fell in love with him, man whose heart belonged to the sea before it ever belonged to you. I knew if I had him, I would eventually have you. You were too weak to resist the bait.”

Her voice when she spoke was colder than the depths of the ocean, “So you arranged his arrival, didn’t you? Sank his boat in that storm?”

Snoke glanced around with thinly veiled trepidation as the water around them bubbled ominously.

“You wanted me here, a puppet under your command like these poor people, because you wanted what my mother denied you…access to the power of my bloodline.”

He sneered. “You know nothing about the power of your bloodline. Your foolish parents died before they could teach you anything. You’re helpless.”

“Remember, Rey,” hummed the voice in her mind. “You’re stronger than you know.”

She twitched her fingers at her side, the water around them shifting restlessly at the motion. “Perhaps,” she said quietly, “but I won’t go willingly to my death. I’ll fight you…unless you give him to me. Give me Ben and let me try to take him home. If I die, and I probably will, then at least it will be while trying to bring him back home to his mother. She deserves to bury her son.”

Snoke shrugged, unconcerned at the bargain and obviously believing that she was would never make it to the surface alive. He shifted his tentacles until Ben once again bobbed within her reach. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, ignoring the unpleasant texture of death on his skin as she pulled him close.

Her arms twined around his waist, his head falling limply against her shoulder as she positioned him in her grip as though preparing to kick desperately toward the surface. Her fingers traced the exposed bone of his spine as they drifted under his T shirt and along the waistband of his pants…and finally rubbed against the steel of the knife he had always kept sheathed on his belt.

She moved before Snoke could guess her intention, one hand pushing against Ben as she urged the water to pull him away and out of the space between her and her target, and the other hand swinging toward the scarred face of the thing that had taken him from her.

Snoke jumped back, startled by the sudden motion, and his army of the dead surged forward in response to his alarm, but it was too late. Ben’s knife found its mark, sinking deep into the creature’s neck with a sickening thud and unleashing a flood of dark blood into the water.

She turned, pulling the knife out of the hideous flesh she had sheathed it in and grabbing wildly for Ben, desperate to keep him close as the other bodies pressed in upon them, but as the light faded from Snoke’s eyes they all dropped away one by one. Her heart broke that they would remain in a watery grave, but she could save only one from that fate.

The water around her returned to darkness, no longer illuminated by Snoke’s unnatural abilities, and left her with only Ben, the knife, and the cold merciless sea.

She clamped the knife blade between her teeth as a precaution, unwilling to drop it and be unarmed if any other nightmarish things emerged from the deep, and wrapped both arms firmly around Ben’s waist.

Alarm hastened the pace of her kicks toward the surface as each breath became more labored and the water in her lungs began to feel uncomfortably thick and wet. She reached for the sea, focusing her mind on the budding connection that now simmered just beneath the surface, the power Snoke had been willing to kill for, the power Ben had already died for.

Water rushed by her, the current behind her pressing her upward as the ocean bent and moved to her command. She was untrained, but instinct was enough to drive her on, her newly discovered strength propelling her to the lifegiving air above.

She was close enough to see the lightening that still flashed across the sky as it shimmered in the water above her when Ben was yanked from her arms.

Air rushed into her lungs when she clawed her way to the top, feet from where her overturned boat drifted calmly in the now steady rain. The storm had died down, leaving the sea to rock gently instead of rage, but the water around her sloshed fitfully, stirred by her churning emotions as she turned to search for him in brief flashes of lightening that still jumped across the rumbling clouds.

“No, no, no,” she sobbed, splashing her hands through the water, and reaching out with her clumsy power to search for him even though she knew he was gone. A high keening whine tore from her throat and she couldn’t keep her mind from drifting to Han and Leia and how she’d failed to bring their son home, even though she’s tried so hard to find him, to keep him with her.

Eventually exhaustion became stronger than her hopes, and she was forced to swim slowly toward the boat. She didn’t try to right it, she knew she’d never have the strength to haul her body inside anyway, so she clung weakly to the hull and let her forehead rest against the wood.

Sleep finally claimed her as dawn began to lighten the sky.

***

In the dream, his fingers were warm on her cheek.

In the dream, he cupped her face in his hand and kissed away the tears the lingered at the corners of her eyes.

In the dream, his mouth said her name like a benediction.

In the dream, he was alive.

***

“Rey, wake up, sweetheart.”

She opened her eyes and blinked up at the bright blue midmorning sky. Her body was stiff and aching as she lay on the beach beside the rowboat. She must have drifted in on the current.

“Rey?” His tone was familiar and frantic with worry.

“Ben?” she croaked, turning her head to find him kneeling in the sand beside her. He was still wearing the tattered, sea-soaked t-shirt, but his eyes had returned to their golden amber shade. There were tears on his cheeks, now whole and healthy- the only sign of what had happened to him that remained was a long pink scar that bisected the side of his face that begun to rot away. “You’re _alive_.”

He nodded, pulling her into his arms and squeezing her until her ribs ached under the pressure. “The sea gave me back to you,” he explained, pausing between each word to press desperate kisses across her face. “You killed Snoke. You saved me.” The tang of salt and sea mixed with their tears when he settled his mouth on hers.

She was home again.

***

They whispered about it for years in awed tones behind closed doors, but no one dared to ask too many questions about the pretty little witch who seemed to control the tides, the one who had gone to sea and returned with the risen dead.

Her children asked about the rumors, the stories they heard from their friends, but she only laughed as their father held her close.

She taught them to love the ocean, and how to make the waves dance and water leap.

There was nothing for them to fear.


End file.
